


Armageddon

by BuildingGsr



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24651208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuildingGsr/pseuds/BuildingGsr
Summary: A few days after the events in "A la cart", episode 8x02.Grissom and Sara's house + the letter Grissom wrote to Sara during his sabbatical.
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle
Kudos: 12





	Armageddon

**Author's Note:**

> First publication January 22, 2016 [on my website http://buildinggsr.altervista.org/]  
> Last editing: December 2020/

Sara leaned against the jamb of Grissom’s study door and furtively glanced inside. She remained silent, peeking at a scene that she had already seen hundreds of times, but that she now found unique and unrepeatable.

Sitting at his desk, Grissom was consulting some papers, making comparisons and writing notes on a pad.

"Hey Mr. Bugman," Sara called him, standing by the door.

Grissom raised his head and turned it to the left. He was surprised by Sara's presence, but he greeted her with a beautiful and warm smile. He relaxed against the backrest of the chair, indicating that a break was welcome.

"Some time has passed since you called me that," he pointed out, slipping off his glasses.

"Some time? Almost a decade, I guess..." She smiled at how time seemed to flow differently for him. "I made some tea,” she told him, lifting the cup she was holding, “I thought you could use some."

An odd smile appeared on Grissom’s face – an odd smile that Sara knew very well and that foreshadowed a quotation.

" _ Take some tea, the March Hare said to Alice _ ," Grissom effectively declaimed.

Sara didn’t find the challenge difficult and their dance began.

" _ I've had nothing yet, Alice replied, so I can't take more. _ "

" _ You mean you can't take less, said the Hatter... _ "

" _...it's very easy to take more than nothing, _ " Sara concluded.

A mutual nod declared the end of the match and they smiled at how those almost childish games, those little defies laid down and always taken up, still amused them so much.

Sara felt she had gained the permission to enter. Not that it was needed or that Grissom required it, but despite all the years she’d known him, or maybe because of them, she had always kept a certain rigor and respect when she ventured into his spaces. So she approached the desk and Grissom had to shuffle the scientific papers and forensic journals that ruled the place in order to make room for the mug.

"Are you doing homework?" Sara joked.

"I'm just...putting the pieces of the case together," Grissom answered listlessly, scratching his head. 

"Do you need any help?"

"No, thanks. I’m almost done. Plus...you have to rest," he added with a gallant look, which didn’t hide a certain severity.

"I don't have much time left to rest anyway. Tomorrow is the big day," Sara pointed out with a sigh, while turning her gaze to the rest of the room.

Grissom fell from the sky. "...big day?" he asked, gazing at Sara intrigued and tentative.

She laughed at that. "I come back to work tomorrow," she reminded him. "The legendary Swing waits for me," she added in a vaguely sarcastic spirit.

"Is that tomorrow already?" Grissom asked, more surprised than he should have, given that the day for Sara’s return had been set only a few days before.

"It is."

Grissom reacted to the news with a disappointed “Oh”. Instinctively, then, he grabbed the cup and drank some tea, as his eyes turned serious and ruinously fell on his papers. Sara understood his frustration because she felt the same way, so she tried to play it down.

"I haven’t been around the lab for less than a week and you’ve forgotten me already?" she asked, faking disappointment.

For a moment Grissom thought she was serious and lifted a dismayed, but surprised gaze; yet, when he saw Sara’s face and her placid smile, he smiled shyly.

"It would be impossible for me to forget you even if I wanted to," he declared, standoffish. Sara’s smile grew happier, but... "Your personality is too ugly to be forgotten," Grissom added, to make her enthusiasm wither. However, he combined that last sentence with a wink and his game amused Sara.

"I’ll leave you to your work," she announced walking out, "or you'll need two more hours to finish what you were about to finish two hours ago."

Grissom was dazed. "Did I already say that two hours ago?"

"You did," Sara answered before stepping out of the room, amused by his oddity.

Grissom stood gazing at the empty doorway for a moment. Then he called Sara again. Her head peeked in and he had the feeling that he couldn’t do it without her anymore.

"Come here," he beckoned her.

"Did you forget something?" she asked as walking in.

Grissom gestured again and invited her to sit on his legs: he turned the chair parallel to the desk and beat one hand on his thigh.

"Sit," he said.

Sara found Grissom’s behaviour pretty strange,  However, she agreed without comment; with subtle pleasure actually. He moved his chair closer to the desk, so she could lean her back against the edge, and put his arms around her waist. Sara’s arm, the one broken in two points and plastered a few days before, lingered in between on her lap.

At that moment, Grissom’s face took on a pacific air.

"Hey...!" he greeted her softly, with the same warmth he would have shown as if it were their first encounter of the day.

"Hey...!" she replied with the same feeling, almost tweeting.

"So...tell me, are you ready for tomorrow?"

Grissom’s question felt like he was trying to unveil a secret.

"I am."

"You know you could have waited a few more days."

Sara appreciated his care. "Yes, I know," she diligently answered, "but...I’m bored to death..." she added readily, almost in protest.

Grissom laughed. He knew how much she hated being on the bench.

"Do you feel alright?" he asked, turning serious again.

Sara knew that his question demanded a long and argued response which examined her psychophysical status in depth.

"I’m fine," she answered instead – a short one indeed, but preceded by a sigh that expressed a quick, but intense reasoning.

Grissom investigated her eyes and he knew she was lying.

"I’m great!" she added, trying to persuade him.

Grissom kept staring at her and Sara knew he didn’t believe her – she could understand it by the way his breath, on those occasions, turned slower and thoughtful. Nevertheless, by that kind of breathing that always gave the impression he was about to say something, Sara also knew that he would have let it go, like he did most of the time. He wouldn't have questioned her – not because he didn’t care for her, but rather because of the deep respect and trust he felt for her. And it's precisely on his trust and respect that Sara counted on at that moment. It paid off.

As expected, Grissom didn’t reply, but simply gave a nod. His gaze then fell on the plaster cast on Sara’s arm.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, without looking up.

This time, Sara's answer was honest. "Not much."

Grissom untied his fingers and brushed them against the tip of Sara's fingers, which popped out of the plaster cast. He gently held them in his. Then he looked up.

"I’ll miss you," he said.

A smile of awkwardness colored his face and revived its features; but it was just an instant. As soon as the awareness of what he had just said reached his brain, Grissom’s traits morphed into a deeply sad expression. Sara was pleasantly moved and, at the same time, saddened by his confession. In the moment, she had no answer. Instinctively she moved closer and kissed him. Then she observed him. She was surprised by suddenly realizing how big a part that man had always occupied in her life.

It had been two years now since they’d gotten involved and before that, for six years they had lived separate, but parallel lives, connected by hours upon hours upon hours, of working together. Every day, for years. It never became a habit, their relationship. It was never taken for granted. It always used to have some emotion, bad or good, lying in wait behind the corner, ready to seize the moment, jump out unexpectedly to catch them.

"Well...c’mon. I’m not leaving for a sabbatical," Sara commented all of the sudden. A mocking smile stood out on her face.

That comment, and the allusion it dragged, came so unexpected – another emotion jumped out from behind the corner – that Grissom couldn’t do anything but smile at it. She’s Sara, after all, he said to himself. And she couldn’t be anyone else but Sara. Always ready to recall and stress the injustices she had faced, but at the same time so noble when facing them, compassionately at the beginning and with irony as time passed.

"At least you know in advance that we’re going to be parted for a while," she went on, unceasing and smug, realizing she had torn down the gate of the castle. "After all, you did just say I have an ugly character, and if you try to deny it –

"Ok," Grissom stopped her. "You made me change my mind: I won’t miss you at all!"

He laughed as he said it, but he felt like crying. Sara instead turned a bit more serious.

"You can always write me a letter," she proposed. Her voice had become placid and heartfelt, and her gaze almost hopeful. "The last one you wrote, I’d say that...it was a very successful effort," she admitted with a sweet and admired tone.

Grissom’s reaction was unexpected: he frowned and stared at Sara with a bewildered expression.

"What letter?" he asked.

The sweetness and tenderness on Sara’s face turned into doubt, and she frowned as well, trying to understand if it was a joke.

"What do you mean  _ what letter _ ?"

"I mean what I said. I...don’t know what letter you’re talking about," he explained.

His voice was now hesitant, while the doubt he was missing something, and because of this had made her angry, instilled itself within him.

On her part, Sara still appeared uncertain, as she pondered over the situation. She was trying to figure out how to explain when all of a sudden an idea brightened in her head.

"Oh...!" she murmured while an apologetic look grew in her eyes. "I probably shouldn’t have read it."

"What letter?" Grissom asked again. "What’s going on now?" he lightly protested, not understanding the reason for the tension that had arisen.

Sara finally convinced herself. "I have found...no, found is not the right word...saw, here it is, yeah, I saw it, it was sticking out your Shakespeare book..."

Hearing the title of the book, Grissom immediately understood what Sara was talking about and this made him instinctively draw back his head, with an almost scared expression on his face.

"I didn’t rummage in your things, I swear!" Sara hurried up to clarify, worried by Grissom’s reaction. "It was on the bed table. I glimpsed my name written on it and so I thought..." she stopped talking, noticing that Grissom looked kind of disappointed.

“When did you read it?” he asked.

"I can’t remember exactly. Let me think...before Natalie, for sure. And...yes...before Heather’s case, but –

“What!” Grissom watched her even more disappointed. “Weeks have passed...!”

“You didn’t exactly plan for me to read it, did you?" Sara asked him, feeling regretful – not so much for the fact that she thought he didn’t want her to read the letter, but rather for giving him sorrow, although it was not clear to her what kind.

He sighed. "You could have told me you had read it," he said then.

"Yeah, well, based on your reaction, maybe it was better if I hadn’t."

"Hang on,” he stopped her, turning suddenly deeply serious. “I never said that I didn’t want you to read it."

"I’m not really sure about that..."

"I was waiting for you to talk about it!" he exclaimed.

That answer, said with certainty and honesty, caught Sara by surprise, like a testing shot fired without being noticed.

"Excuse me?" she asked, confused.

"I wanted you to talk about it. I wanted the topic to come out...!" Grissom explained further, almost losing his own patience.

"So...you left the letter there on purpose?"

"Do I look like someone who leaves things around without a reason?"

"But, I don't understand… why were you waiting for me to talk about it?"

Grissom distanced himself, but at the same time brought his fingers around Sara’s lower back again. He smiled, turning his gaze to the door in front of him, looking over Sara’s shoulder for a moment. He dampened and bit his lips, pensively.

"What’s going on?" Sara asked.

He didn’t reply.

"I feel my arm hurting, and that means I’m getting nervous. If you could –

Grissom finally turned to her and the way he looked at her made Sara stop talking. She watched him in return and she had the impression he was really determined.

"What?" she asked again, now a bit lost.

"Do you remember the content of the letter?" he asked in reply.

Sara took a moment thinking over it – and Grissom felt a bit disappointed that she needed time to remember. When Sara began to speak though, Grissom understood.

" _ Dear Sara, our parting was awkward, _ " she almost blushing quoted by heart, " _ I don't know why I find it so difficult to express my feelings to you...Even though we're far apart, I can see _ –

"Did you learn it by heart?!" Grissom stopped her, surprised and astonished – that was much more than he expected.

She shrugged. "A letter from you is something to be remembered, I think," she explained, shyly and a bit embarrassed by saying it out loud.

"We exchanged lots of emails when you were working in San Francisco," Grissom objected. "Do you remember them by heart as well? I must say that I don’t know how I’ll react if you say yes."

Sara laughed, seeing him seriously agitated by the mere event of an affirmative answer to his question.

"Let’s say that they were not along the same lines," she finally answered. "So...no, I don’t remember them by heart," she concluded with a reassuring smile.

Grissom’s face turned radiant with a wide smile.

"Yeah,” Sara went on, “my mother had tons of mental problems, she is schizophrenic, but I...don’t think...oh, well, better, I hope not to reach –

"I love you."

Sara’s talkativeness stopped abruptly – and she felt, inside herself, something like the noise of a car falling down a cliff. Her look, meandering in front of her, between the wall and the floor, while she was speaking, now halted in mid-air, motionless. After a moment her eyes turned to Grissom, to her left, and a second later, all of a sudden, her head did the same, as if a jolt of electricity made it move. Sara stood like that, staring at Grissom. She stood there staring at his two blue eyes watching her – or better, examining her – and, really, she didn’t know what to say. Honestly? She didn’t think he would ever have said it to her. Her plastered arm hurt again and, in order to not feel the pain, she had to try to relax. A smile, almost a laugh, showed on her lips as she lowered her gaze.

"This...doesn’t really look like not being able to express feelings," she commented almost under her breath, raising her eyes again, hesitantly, in Grissom’s eyes.

A corner of Grissom's mouth lifted in a determined smile and he really looked very proud of what Sara had just said.

"This is the reason why I was waiting for you to talk about the letter," he happily protested.

"Oh, yeah, everything’s clear now," Sara confirmed.

Another smile peeked out, but then something made Sara think – a reasoning that brought a wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"Yet, some moments ago, when I said I read the letter...you looked disappointed..." she observed.

Grissom got more comfortable on the chair and to do it he had to draw Sara a bit closer to himself to not let her slide down.

"I  _ was _ disappointed, actually," he then answered.

"I don’t understand."

"I...would’ve preferred we’d talked about this...before."

"Before?"

Grissom’s gaze skidded from Sara’s face and fell on the plaster around her arm.

"Before this," he answered, delicately resting a hand on her plastered forearm.

Sara stood a moment thinking over.

"Why, what would have changed?"

Grissom smiled seeing how Sara was constantly looking for answers. He shrugged, the way he did when he was embarrassed; his head then, as a further confirmation of his awkwardness, tilted slightly to a side, as he kept looking down. 

"Saying that now sounds a bit..."

He tried to speak, but a sigh seemed to close his mind.

"...forced by events?" Sara concluded for him.

Grissom looked up in Sara’s eyes and watched them surprised, but at the same time glad that she had understood. She smiled of compassion.

"To me, it sounds like what it is," she commented with openness. "A man saying I love you."

Sara's definition made Grissom perplexed.

"A man saying...?" he repeated, a bit dissatisfied. "Said like that it loses all of the sentiment," he protested for how Sara’s definition seemed to trivialize his efforts to open up his soul.

Sara’s reply came quickly, as if it had been prepared.

" _ What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. _ "

Grissom surrendered, and leaned against the back of the chair. He stared at her with satisfied eyes.

"I like that," he admitted.

"Of course you do, it’s Shakespeare. With you, it’s like a game won from the outset," Sara minimized.

Grissom nodded with awareness.

"You're special," he said then.

She gave him a shy smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

"Hey, what do you say, wanna go out for dinner tonight?"

His proposal surprised Sara.

"Wow, Gil!” she exclaimed. “A declaration of love, some sweet words and even a dinner out? Am I dying and you don’t know how to break the news?"

Grissom laughed and he had to admit that he had spread too thinly, but he wanted to explain.

"Tomorrow is the big day, right? I thought we could do something special to remember this moment."

"You know? I think I’ll remember this moment even without dinner," Sara confessed, happily. "I appreciate that, thanks Gil,” she continued, “but, look at me, I really don’t look like someone ready for dinner at a restaurant," she explained, pointing at the grazes on her face and her arm in plaster with a wave of her healthy hand.

"You don’t, indeed," Grissom had to agree. "You look more like a little girl after a fight at the playground," he joked.

"Exactly," she laughed.

"But you’re cute anyway," he added, honestly.

Sara, again, couldn’t restrain herself to lower her gaze, welcoming that compliment with the usual surprise that Grissom’s compliments made her feel.

" I'll enjoy flirting with  _ someone _ from Swing ," he winked, without moving his eyes from her.

That joke, no matter how fun it was, made both of them think of the separation they had to face starting the following day. Two lives, bound to each other so strongly for so long...For a moment Sara felt lost and stood gawking, feeling scared.

"Hey," Grissom called her back to reality with a whisper. He spoke again only when he got Sara's attention. "Nothing is gonna change," he tried to reassure her, his voice gentle and polite.

Sara's face turned sad, not properly sure about that. So Grissom pulled her toward himself and his arms went up Sara’s spine, wrapping her in an embrace. She exchanged it by bringing her healthy arm around Grissom’s neck.

It was a silent embrace. One of those embraces in which souls blend into one another, because in the little space they have they can do nothing but penetrate each other and become one, sharing and healing all the anguishing feelings that those kinds of embraces bring. It was a long embrace, which warmed their bodies and hearts.

"We're gonna be fine," Grissom whispered, squeezing her.

He didn’t know if he really believed that - Sara was clearly broken and it would have been hard to get her back on her feet - but that was what he wanted and wished, and he couldn’t help but say it. Sara left the embrace and distanced.

"We're gonna be fine," she repeated and Grissom could feel his own worries, his own doubts and his own hopes leaking from Sara’s echo.

She caressed Grissom’s visage, as if she was testing his real presence.

"Let’s order Indian food?" she asked afterwards.

Grissom, although curious about new empirical experiences and a voracious researcher of the human soul’s diversity, was not an Indian cuisine lover and he avoided it every time he could. Sara knew this very well and so she was surprised when he agreed.

"Alright," she started off. "Now I’m sure, I’m definitely dying."

"Why?!" Grissom laughed.

"You hate Indian cuisine and if you’re willing to eat Indian food, that means the situation is serious."

"I do not hate anything or anybody..." he grumbled.

"Yeah, you're Gandhi,"

"...I just need some...encouragement," Grissom went on, paying no attention to Sara’s sarcasm.

"And what kind of encouragement did you have in this case?" Sara asked, punctiliously.

"You survived a woman not very stable of mind, who left you under a car in the middle of the desert, for instance," Grissom replied seriously.

Sara was caught off guard because she didn’t expect that kind of answer.

"Plus," Grissom went on, "tomorrow is your big day. You’re the guest of honor. You can do whatever you want."

“Whatever I want!” Sara exclaimed, suddenly excited. “That sounds interesting...” she added vaguely flirty.

“So long as it’s possible...” Grissom tried to contain her enthusiasm.

"Ok, I’ll think about it. But now just stop talking about tomorrow: the more we talk about it, the more it feels like Armageddon."

"Agreed."

Sara then took a deep breath, to gather some courage, and got up.

"Enough of this mushy stuff, too," she said, modifying her tone of voice,  faking the toughness of a curt man caught being moved by the sight of a bloomed wildflower , and she headed towards the door. "If you continue like this, I’ll get used to it and you’ll be in trouble if your behavior won’t be like this every day from now to eternity..."  _ Eternity? _ she asked herself and immediately understood the allusion that might have shone through that sentence. "...or as long as it lasts," she corrected right away, pretending the duration of their relationship wasn’t that important to her, and making Grissom smile. She stopped by the doorway.

“Nine years...?” she asked, turned to Grissom, whose fragrance was still lingering inside her nostrils.

He had already gone back to his work and he lifted a curious glance at her question. Only after a moment did he understand what she was referring to – the answer he had given Ecklie about when the two of them got involved. A smile seemed to arise, but it soon retreated.

“Topic closed,” Grissom said with a hint of seriousness and indifference. That pretense lasted only an instant, because as he went on the smile of a moment before - a cunning kind of smile - showed up again. “Enough of this mushy stuff, you said. Right?” he said then, glancing at Sara over the top of his glasses.

She laughed at how he had used her own words against her.

“You never showed it though,” she came back again.

“Or maybe you were not paying attention.”

“I  _ was _ paying attention, Gilbert,” she pointed out, precisely and abruptly. “But you were speaking a language nobody knows, so no one understood a thing of what you were saying.”

“I only recently learnt how to speak,” he replied and that answer appeared like a closing, which was completed with, “I seem to have showed it a few moments ago.”

Sara felt satisfied by that clarification.

“Right,” she agreed docilely. She lifted a hand to her forehead military style and left, disappearing into the hallway.

Grissom remained leaning on the table on his elbows, staring at the open empty door.

"Hey Sara!" he called her.

She was already on the other end of the hallway, in the doorway of the hall.

"I love you too!" she replied loudly, to make sure he could hear her.

Even though it was not the first time Sara had told him so, Grissom smiled, pleased, and Sara understood that by the kind of squeaking of his chair.


End file.
